Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations,three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.

 

Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.As of June 2012, these donations exceeded $330 million.

 

Early life

Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland).His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Homonna, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austro–Hungarian Empire (now Humenné in Slovakia).Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.

 

Newman showed an early interest in the theater, which his mother encouraged. At the age of seven, he made his acting debut, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. Graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.

 

Military service

Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. Newman enrolled in the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University, hoping to be accepted for pilot training, but was dropped when it was discovered he was color blind.He was sent instead to boot camp and then received further training as a radioman and gunner. Qualifying as a rear-seat radioman and gunner in torpedo bombers, in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barber's Point, Hawaii. He was subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons (VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100). These torpedo squadrons were responsible primarily for training replacement pilots and combat air crewmen, placing particular importance on carrier landings.

 

He later flew from aircraft carriers as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, he served aboard USS Bunker Hill during the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. He was ordered to the ship with a draft of replacements shortly before the Okinawa campaign, but his life was spared because he was held back after his pilot developed an ear infection. The men who remained in his detail were killed in action.

 

After the war, he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Speech at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio in 1949. Shortly after earning his degree, Newman joined several summer stock companies most notably the Woodstock Players in Illinois. He toured with them for three months and developed his talents with a part of Woodstock Players. Newman later attended the Yale School of Drama for one year before moving to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

 

Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood: "Too close to the cake," he reported him saying, "Also, no place to study."

 

Marriages and family

Newman was married to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. They had two daughters (Susan Kendall born in 1953 and Stephanie) and a son, Scott, who died in November 1978 from a drug overdose.He appeared in films including Breakheart Pass, The Towering Inferno and the 1977 film Fraternity Row. Paul Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son. Susan is a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist and has Broadway and screen credits, including a starring role as one of four Beatles fans in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and also a small role opposite her father in Slap Shot. She also received an Emmy nomination as co-producer of his telefilm, The Shadow Box.

 

Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer, in 1957 he divorced Witte. He married Woodward early in 1958. They remained married for fifty years until his death in 2008.They had three daughters: Elinor "Nell" Teresa (b. 1959), Melissa "Lissy" Stewart (b. 1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (b. 1965). Newman directed Nell (using the stage name Nell Potts) alongside her mother in the films Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.
 

The Newmans lived away from the Hollywood environment, making their home in Westport, Connecticut. Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When asked once about infidelity, he famously quipped, "Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?"

 

Illness and death

Newman was scheduled to make his professional stage directing debut with the Westport Country Playhouse's 2008 production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing health issues.In June 2008, it was widely reported that Newman had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment at Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City.Photographs taken of Newman in May and June showed him looking gaunt.Writer A. E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start the Newman Own company in the 1980s, told the Associated Press that Newman told him about the disease about eighteen months prior to the interview.Newman's spokesman told the press that the star was "doing nicely," but neither confirmed nor denied that he had cancer.In August, after reportedly finishing chemotherapy, Newman told his family he wished to die at home.

 

Newman died on September 26, 2008, aged 83, surrounded by his family and close friends.His remains were cremated after a private funeral service near his home in Westport.